Eyes On Fire
by Yorick's Talking Skull
Summary: True lovers always find a way to each other. On the darkest paths, their flames burn brightest. Post-finale.
1. Chapter 1

**Eyes On Fire**: True lovers always find a way to each other. On the darkest paths, their flames burn brightest. With the whisper of his three words, he watched her eyes smolder like fire. There was no taking back those words…wherever that may lead them… Post-finale.

_Author's Note: There will be four parts of this story. These will come in deeper installments, hopefully like good, novel-styled writing. There will be one part for each word of the life-changing phrase "I love you," and the last part for a word that has become their way of saying "I love you"…the word "always." Now, for the tale. I hope you find it meaningful. _

* * *

><p><em>I. Love. You.<em>

_I:_ With my complete self, for all that I am, and all that I will be…

_Love:_ With everything I am, with every driving passion, with the faintest of breaths you draw from me when I am lost in what we have built together…

_You:_ No other heart except your own, because all I see now, all I see in that glimmering horizon of the future, and that sunset of our last days clasping weakened hands together, is you…

...

_Installment One:- I-_

_..._

Kate Beckett's heart was beating in Josh Davidson's trembling hands.

Ringlets of blood around the bullet wound in her heart poured and marbleized on the surface of his latex surgical gloves. The surgeon's own head pounded violently. The doctors around him swarmed like ghosts in his vision and watched as he froze, a scalpel shaking in his hand that was to make the incision and take out the bullet that rest within the lower left ventricle of her heart.

Josh could see their times together flash in a blur of red, like her freely-flowing blood, in his memory.

He remembered when things began to fall apart as effortlessly as their relationship came together. He remembered her nightmares after she was trapped in the freezer with Castle. Josh might have held her in his arms that night, but he was not the one she cried out to in her sleep, the one she murmured she loved as she clasped violently to their bed sheets, her face shattered in silent pain.

It was him she needed; freely in her dreams, secretly in her life. It was _always _Castle.

And in those darkened moments of night, as Josh listened to her restless nightmare cries, no matter how much he knew about the physical human heart, Josh felt he never fully knew Kate's.

He tried to distract himself from her words in their bed by thinking the average adult heart beats seventy-two times per minute, one hundred thousand times per day, two and a half billion times if you live a long life. But all he could think after that was how Kate wanted to live that life with Castle.

Her secrets and his knowledge of them came to a fiery dispute the morning he found her mother's murder board with Castle's notes added to it with a careful, unmistakable scrawl.

Josh did not know whether to be more angered, or confused. He was certain Kate was not cheating on him with the writer, but Castle's relationship with her, however unromantically connected, seemed to bear so much more meaning than theirs. Why didn't she share with him the biggest part of her human identity, her drive in life? Why did she share it with Castle?

He asked her those very questions.

Their argument became inflamed quickly, like paper catching to flame. Josh became accusatory, against his very nature, she became more defensive. Her eyes filled with unbearable pain as he continued to inquire about why Castle was the man she turned to for the hardest times in her life. Kate shouted something about them being friends. Josh shouted that she did not have to calm Castle when he was horrified that she had died in that freezer, she did not have to watch the way Castle looked at her, or how she cried out for the writer in her sleep.

"_You never cry out for me. In your dreams, or your life, I am not the one,"_ Josh told her, the emotion from their fight stinging at the back of his throat, his eyes. _"Why? Why is it always him? You owe me that."_

"_I love him."_

The hushed words flew like a bullet in the room, cutting both occupants like a knife. There was a pained silence after that, and Kate fell onto the sofa, bringing her head in her hands. The words escaped her without thought, without hesitation. She did not stop them because she couldn't.

The three words came like breathing.

Kate did not stop Josh when he packed up his things and left. He knew now, she knew now, and there was no going back from this place. He left her with a soft kiss on the forehead and a trembling brush of hand on the side of her cheek.

"_You're free,"_ he whispered.

Josh was torn from his memories by the shouts of doctors around him, and the deadpan of her heart monitor. Doctors pushed him away and began a desperate attempt to remove the bullet and restart Kate Beckett's heart.

Josh did not remember much after that. Later, all he could recall was being pulled out of the room by a nurse, and collapsing to the floor. _Objectification_, he tells himself, trying to remember the time-honored coping mechanism of doctors working on bodies. But he begins throwing up, the image Kate's lifeless face sharp in his memory. It poked out from under the surgical cover that fluttered aside when her heart had stopped and doctors swarmed around her.

Josh collapsed against the frame of the surgery room door. He pressed his ear against the slim space between the two wide doors to hear the now erratic, but still living beat of her heart from the monitor.

In that moment he knew that heart he held physically in his hands was not his anymore, and he had a feeling it never was. In the same pained heartbeat, he knew whose it was all this time.

[][][]

The moment was captured in a darkened black and white.

It was plastered in every reputable newspaper and gossip column alike. The photo even burned at the edges of the author's mind as he sat in the waiting room in a restless misery, trying to prevent Kate's father from seeing the image, too. Castle buried it inside his jacket, sparing Jim Beckett any more indescribable pain.

Even now, the writer could have never imagined that the press would already be near the cemetery when knowledge broke out on the Captain's death and his involvement on the case.

In the recess of his agonizingly numb mind, Richard Castle could still see the headline of _The New York Times_ in its ornate, blaring-black letters:

"**Writer Loses Muse, Lover, Or Both?"**

At least this particular newspaper article did not declare Katherine Beckett dead.

Kate was on a gurney in the black and white photograph underneath the headline. The author's lips were brushing against hers. Moments before, like a silent prayer, he remembered whispering, _"Stay with me, please…I love you…" _even though her lips long since had gone cold.

After that moment, he whispered to her about them getting old together, the way he would follow her around and provide loving annoyance until her last breath, the way he hoped their kids would look as beautiful as her.

But then the words formed a knot. Pained sobs were all he could offer in exchange when the doctors pulled him away from her gurney, forcefully prying his pallid hands from it.

In the distance, Josh watched until he had to turn away.

But even that did not blot out the cries of the author for a lover that had faded in his very hands.

[][][]

"_Kate…I love you."_

When Kate heard the words come trembling from the author's lips, she felt a burning in the depths of her abdomen that she knew, even in that moment where everything was fading, were not related to the bullet in her chest. Kate tried to force something out of her own mouth as he spoke the words again, but her eyes only widened and smoldered at the realization that he loved her.

He felt that same yet-unspoken passion and she could not say anything in return.

Only a solitary tear could stream down her face.

He watched it fall.

He looked so beautiful in that moment, she thought. And since she could say nothing, she let her eyes memorize the form of his face that she wanted to reach out and touch but never had the courage to, the feeling of his hands on her that she secretly hoped would create other fires than those in loss, and his eyes that she never told him were so beautiful.

There was an agonizing tension in her chest, burning like a fire raging through her veins at the gunshot, but before her eyes fell back, she felt peace.

A peace she only felt before her mother had been murdered.

_He loved her._

And if that knowledge of love was all she had leaving this earth, it would be enough to carry her home.

Her heart altered between that excruciating pain and the most beautiful of flutters when his words still flowed in her ear, clashing with the chaos around them. Kate felt her body being lifted; she heard the roll of gurney wheels, the shouts of doctors, the cries of those at the dismembered funeral.

But what Kate focused on was a solitary voice.

She listened to the voice as if it were her lifeline. It told her that she was loved, that she had to hold on, it spoke of the promise of love, of children…

It was this voice that stopped when she felt the warm flutter of fleshy lips against her own.

It was this voice, this kiss, that she would deny ever came from the mouth of Richard Castle.

[][][]

When Kate took a breath, inhaling deeply though her nostrils, it smelled of her childhood home.

"_Thirty seconds until she is fully under with the anesthesia…" _

When she reached out with her hand into an expanse of white, she could almost feel the flutter of softened blue curtains that flowed in the breeze of their old family kitchen, when the windows were left open in the summertime.

"_She's almost there…"_

Kate shivered as she could feel the curtains beneath her fingertips. When she squinted against the bright light, she could see her mother's roses in the windowsill garden. With hesitance, Kate let her slim fingers trace the velvety petals, and then fall to the sharpened spears of the thorns.

"_She's out…"_

Kate stopped when she felt breath patter along the base of her neck.

"_Those flowers are a lot like life. Roses are so beautiful, elegant, yet pained with so many thorns."_

She did not even need to turn and recognize the voice. Kate froze in the fear that was deep in her chest. She felt a chin rest on her shoulder.

When she turned, her mother's dark eyes were staring back at her. Her breath was warm, living in her daughter's ear:

"_Thorns may protect a rose from being picked, but the flower will still be loved, and admired from afar. And one day, there will be a person, who watches it grow over time, and with loving care they will have that rose for all that it is, thorns and irrevocable beauty."_

Kate could not respond, but she reached out, pulling her mother back by the shoulders and then holding her face in her hands. It was tangible.

"_I'm…dead…" _

The detective's voice faded into a pained rasp.

Her mother pulled her into an embrace, feeling her daughter's tears against her shoulder.

"_You are that rose,"_ Joanna whispered, her hands clasping her daughter's weakened frame against her. _"He is your keeper."_

[][][]

When Kate's eyes fluttered open for the first time, it was days after she was shot.

Kate could feel the burn of her dried throat from a breathing tube, and the pulsation of an I.V. needle in her arm, weariness from what she suspected were the hardcore painkillers.

But even that did not stop the ache in her chest when she glanced to the base of her hospital bed.

Staying clear of the medical equipment around her hands, arms, and face, Castle's head collapsed into the end of the bed. One of his hands, now pallid and thin, clasped to her almost sheet-white foot poking out from under the hospital blanket.

She watched him weakly for a moment, and her lips tugged faintly upward, the ghost of a smile against her breathing tube. His unshaven face was lined with worry, but it seemed to fade as she nudged her foot against his face.

Castle's lips fluttered against its surface with every shallow breath he took.

Kate was about to wake him from what she felt was Castle experiencing a nightmare with this breathing, but like him, she faded into the shadows of defeat, that darkened place of losing each other all over again in their dreams.

[][][]

The next day Kate was able to say little to the author, or even stay awake much.

She debated what pain was greater: having to watch the author clasp her hand as he watched her slip away yet again with the medications, or that fiery pain that rose in her chest without the heavy medicine dosage, but being there with him.

"Go along with the pain medications," he pleaded her, taking her hand and wondering if she even felt the same twist of the heart at the simplest touch between them.

"I can't, Castle. I need to t—"

She could not even control the rasp of pain that left her gritted teeth.

"Kate, when you wake up, I will be here waiting for you," he said, quietly.

She nodded in defeat and the doctors were quick to administer the pain medications and leave the two alone. Even as the doctors went about treating her, he still held her hand. Only when they left did Kate let a small smile come about her lips. She arched her head slightly when the author's hand released hers and he reached out to trace her jaw line hesitantly, and slowly cup her jaw.

Their eyes were locked as she silently returned the gesture, letting her own hand roam across his worn face. If for a moment, lost in a silent reverie.

"The rustic look works for you. Dapper…" she murmured hoarsely, her hands running across his jaw line, feeling his unshaven face with the tips of her fingers. All he felt were the faintest of sparks at her touch.

He smiled a bit as he eased his face into her hands and closed his eyes, heaving a breath, smiling lightly for the first time in what felt like forever.

"I could be hearing things, but I believe that was a compliment," he said softly, watching her face catch like the swell of light he found burning in her eyes.

"It's the pain meds, silly," she sighed, as they overtook her. "They make you say…silly things…"

[][][]

The next night, he heard her screaming.

It sounded like when she shouted for him to let her go so she could join Montgomery in his final stand, and Castle decided that the sound of her in anguish was the goddamned worst noise he had ever known.

Castle got up from his bedside chair and tried to wake her. With a fluid motion, he kicked off his shoes and clambered beside her, clasping her trembling body to his, desperately rattling her from this nightmare world that the heavy dosage of pain medications left her in. He tried to call out to her, to drown out her cry to her mother, or Roy…or even for him to stay with her in her nightmares…

"I am right here, Kate. I am here. Please wake up…_please_…"

When the detective's eyes flew open, she found orbs of startled blue staring back at her in the darkness. She could not be certain, but from the moonlight flickering in from the windows, his eyes were glinting with what appeared to be tears. It was when she released a breath did he notice how close his lips were to hers. Fearing he was making a mistake, his hands stopped brushing her sweat drenched hair from her face.

Kate found herself not even able to reply, her body pressed so intimately against the author's.

"I am so sorry," he said quickly, noting her trembling hesitation.

He moved from her body and withdrew his hands from her face, and pushed his legs out from under the sheets. Castle was about to get up when he felt a light tug on his hand that still remained beside her on the mattress.

He turned to find her smoldering eyes meet his.

"_Hold me,"_ she whispered.

Her voice was so small.

She turned her body away from him, waiting.

He exhaled, letting out a breath as he clambered back beside her. He tried to think how he was going to do this after all the time of simply wanting her in his arms. He fought this fear and hesitation until his hands finally came around her abdomen slowly. It felt incredibly right. When he sensed her body tremble slightly under his touch, his did as well. She let out a faint murmur.

"_Closer,"_ she whispered, and a small gasp escaped her as he lightly tugged her body to fit into his, the shelter of his arms. She inhaled as she felt his face come to fit into the nape of her neck. He left a solitary kiss there that made her draw an even deeper breath.

Kate wanted to say it then. She wanted to say those three words that would liberate every pang of regret for not saying them earlier. But, something stopped her.

What if those words were a fiery illusion of her mind? It was everything she wanted him to say in that darkened moment.

But three words did come when she felt his breath quicken against the flesh of her neck.

"Are you okay?"

She felt him nod into her neck, but no words came out.

Only when Kate had drifted off into sleep did he press his lips to the base of her neck again, but then he felt her thin body under his hands as he moved forward. And in that moment, he knew that he brought her into this darkness of her mother's case again, and even he was not able to get her out in time.

He suggested they delve deeper into the case. Three years ago he was the one saying they could do this together. She was the one trying to explain it would destroy her in the same way drinking again would ravage an alcoholic.

Now Kate was the one who suffered the punishment. Her body was fragile, like a broken bird.

He even felt her backbones sticking out as his hands fell slowly down her back.

But it was the cold metal around his neck, her mother's ring Josh numbly gave him when they thought she would not make it, that made a sob catch in an anguished knot deep in the back of his throat. The pain threatened to slip from his lips. He pressed his hands against his mouth and slipped from the bed, and the warmth of Kate's body, into the hallway.

He closed the door quickly.

The hollowed noise came deep within him and once it left, tears came driving down his face. He plastered his back into the door of her room and let his body crumple to the ground. Completely lost, his body trembled with his stifled cries.

He did not even notice when exhaustion took him.

Jim Beckett was the one to find him asleep at her door, and with a gentle tug to his shoulder, he awoke the author.

"Come in the waiting room, please. We need to talk," he said, pained eyes not willing to catch the author's. "There's something you should know."

[][][]

Mr. Beckett handed Castle a blackened coffee and motioned for him to sit across from him in the dimly lit waiting room. With a pained glance, Castle watched Jim's eyes trace the headlines of the newspapers that scattered the weathering-wood side table. A lamp illuminated their haunting black and white photographs. When the author tried to apologize, Jim raised what, he probably was not even aware, was a shaking hand to stop him.

The detective's father lowered his hand then, and took out a battered black case from under his seat.

"I want you to have this," Mr. Beckett told him numbly.

When the author had the battered box in his hands, Kate's father began to leave.

"Sir, I—"

"Call me Jim, Castle. And, know that what is within that box should reflect what you've known all along, and something more."

"Jim—"

"Castle," he said, his worn blue eyes catching the author's. "I will not hear you apologize for anything. This is not your fault, but I need you to do something for me."

The author nodded.

"I need you to go on…loving her," Jim Beckett's voice came out quickly, jagged. He looked towards the small table with the newspapers, sorrowfully fixing his focus on them. "I have been a photographer for as long as I could hold a camera, and I have never in my life seen photos like those." He picked up the copy of _The New York Times_ and his worn eyes studied its front page photograph. "Everything is there, now. You can see it. It's written in both of your smoldering eyes."

"Jim, I didn't mean for there to be photographers a—"

"Son, what matters now is you save her. You know that the moment she has the strength to bolt and fight this, she will. Absorb her. Take her away. I need you to stop her, no matter what the result may be." He heaved a deep sigh from the base of his chest. "Many people exist, few live. Teach her to live again."

Jim Beckett inhaled sharply, and caught the author's eyes for a moment, and reached out and tapped the battered black case that rest on the author's lap.

"What lies in that case is unalterable," Jim Beckett said quietly. He walked to the door to leave the author alone. "But, it's the truth."

With wavering hands, Richard Castle opened the rusting clasps of the case…

* * *

><p><strong>Authors Note:<strong> Meaningful? Insightful? Different? Wonder what's in the blackened case? I know. Accurate grief in loss? I hope so.—I would love to know what you thought. It means the world for the time I have spent writing.—Stay Classy, **M**


	2. Installment Two: Love

_Last Chapter_: When Kate almost slipped from their hands, Jim Beckett left Castle with a small black case. What was it would redefine everything, including Castle and Kate's relationship.

**Author's Note:** _It's humbling, really, to see such a wonderful response. Truly, my deepest gratitude. This chapter focuses on the different shades of love: the heartbreaking and beautiful. _

* * *

><p>…<p>

**Installment Two:** _-Love-_

…

"Love arrives, and in its train come ecstasies, old memories of pleasure, ancient histories of pain.  
>Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. …" —<em>Maya Angelou<em>

...

In an instant, the contents of that blackened case changed everything.

_She's going to die because of me. She's going to die because I am keeping this secret from her I cannot solve,_ was all he could think after he poured through Jim's portion of the case's contents, and stumbled upon an unopened manila envelope sent to Jim for security, but addressed to the writer. It was filled with letters from a man who was resting within his grave. It was Roy Montgomery's confession letters, his instructions for Castle to deal with Joanna's murder case, and his obscured notes to solving the case.

But no matter how many hours Castle poured over the information, he could not solve it. The only part of the Captain's files that burned in his mind was his written words:

"_Castle, I know you love Kate. It's evident. It's in both your eyes. I've seen you two grow, together, and I'd hate for this to end in tragedy. She is in severe danger. This case has been pulled out in the open. If you leave her to immerse herself in it, she will lose herself. She will be killed. Solve it yourself, and you have a chance. You both have a chance. _

_If I never see you again, know this is my hope for you: Love her."_

[][][]

Castle finished the letters past four in the morning.

After going through the haunting contents of the case, both Jim's and the Captain's, he shut it violently. He let the closed suitcase fall from his hands and hit the floor of the emptied and dimly lit waiting room.

He felt betrayal seep deep into his heart, raging like fire in his veins.

The man who died heroically, who was buried in honor, he died with his secrets. Now Kate was going to die with him. She was going to die on this elusive search for truth or lies, justice or revenge, the author did not even know anymore.

_She could not die._

He would not live.

The author found Kate where he left her. She was sleeping in her hospital bed, her long hair tousled beautifully against the pillow. The early, deep blue light of the New York morning began to pour hesitantly through the windows, and onto her pale face.

_She could not die. _

He loved her.

He clambered beside her in the bed, and swallowed back a heavy knot in his throat with the feeling of the skin of her arms under his fingertips. He came against her and felt that same indescribable completeness that her body fit so perfectly in the shelter of his.

_She could not die._

He felt their bodies and souls completed each other.

Her breath now was the most perfect song to him. He reveled in the feeling of letting his face come into the nape of her neck and simply feel the slight rise and fall of her body. Her breathing was a miracle he took for granted. Her body was shelter. Her body was home.

Kate shifted slightly, waking up at his presence. Her voice was groggy. "Rick, is that you?"

"Mhmm," he breathed.

"Good," she sighed, beginning to fall back to sleep. "I thought you had left me…"

[][][]

As quickly as they fell into this need for each other, they fell apart. It began with two words from her lips days later that sent a small coffee he snuck for her crashing to the floor.

"Leave me."

The author stared at her baffled. He immediately came to her bedside to put his hands on her face. This time she tried to pull them away, but he held her firmly.

"Kate, what's wrong?"

But beneath her pillow he saw the edges of a newspaper poking out. Kate tried to fight against him, but Castle pulled out a battered copy of _The New York Times_ that must have been delivered to her bedside table before he could toss it.

The black and white picture, the one of him kissing Kate the day she was shot in the cemetery and faded, blared back at the author.

He felt all of the color drain from his face as the detective tried to grab it back. Her voice was sharp, but hushed.

"This, or photos like this, are in every newspaper I opened this morning."

She refused to look at the author. He pleaded with her to look at him, but she refused.

"I did not want cameras to be there," the author told her. "I didn't know. It's just…in that moment I only saw _you_."

"Well, now this case is public. People are going to be raking up things about my mother, things that aren't true, all for the sake of a damned story, a break in the press."

The author tried to grab her hand. "I won't let that happen."

"You already did," she said, gesturing to the papers on her table.

The author's remaining resolve broke.

"What? So I am supposed to apologize for kissing you? I am supposed to be sorry that I thought you going to die and I acted that way?"

_He loved her. _

For Kate there was no denying the fleshy lips she felt against hers were his then. There was no denying that voice that spoke of a future with children, growing old together, was his. There was no denying that those trembling three words came from the very depths of his shattered heart.

That was when Kate said why she was letting him go. When Castle looked back, he could hardly remember her words. He mostly remembered the pain on her face. He heard portions of broken phrases. Something about his family and how they could have been shot at the funeral, her shooter still seeking revenge, and her. Kate said if he respected her, respected her work, he would leave.

He told her that he could not leave her. They raised their voices. They yelled. He told her to think about her heart and stop screaming. She said she was thinking about her heart and that is why she needed to let him go. And with those perplexing words, she said she could not see him anymore, either.

He staggered. He asked her to explain.

She said it louder, the words coming out pained and sharp, _"Leave me."_

But he did not leave. He came to where she was lying in her hospital bed, his heartbroken eyes gracing her figure for what he felt was the last time. He did not want to leave her with any doubt. He could not say he loved her. He left her with something else. His hands slowly cupped her face and he kissed her with subdued passion at the corner of her mouth.

Wordlessly, he left.

[][][]

**One Week Later **

In Richard Castle's trembling hands were blood-red roses.

Tied to the bundle of roses was a parchment-like letter written in the author's careful scrawl. He had rewritten this letter so many times, and spent hours in nervous distress over it. He looked down at the black-lacquered words knowing they would never be enough. They would never be enough to describe the way he felt about Kate. But this was the only way these words could escape him. They haunted him.

You cannot describe love in mere words, though. This he knew. It simply _is_.

In sorrow and pure frustration he had taken the drafts of his love letter to her and threw them into his fireplace. He watched the paper catch, burn, and smolder to the deepest blacks.

But there was one word on a letter that was last to be scorched by the fire:

_**Love **_

The simple word stared back at him from the flames, tauntingly.

Ever since she was shot, she was in everything.

When he made coffee he made two cups and let the second go cold. When his family pulled him from his office, where he spent hours secretly diving into that blackened case's haunting information, to watch a movie, he could only remember Kate's face light up watching Forbidden Planet, then glancing his way to throw popcorn in his face for staring at her.

Only now Richard Castle knew that love is as indescribably heartbreaking as it is beautiful.

He was going to see her that night. He was going to tell her he loved her, but when he came to the hospital with the flowers and letter, her bed was empty. She was moved.

She had a cardiac arrest the night before she was to be released.

At the news, his blood-red roses, and his love letter to her, fell limply on the glinting-white floors of the hospital. Later that night, drunk, he buried them in an old park.

[][][]

**One Month Later: The Dead of July **

"Mother, I'm just so…nervous."

Martha watched Castle from the corner of his writing office, sitting on a leather sofa that she always took when she was in there. She watched with a pain in her heart as her son kept scribbling something on parchment paper, sighing with indignation, and then scrapping the sheet all together. He was not himself since Kate Beckett was shot. His fervor for life diminished when she told him he could not be a part of her life. He slipped even further away after she had that sudden cardiac arrest.

The author clasped a fountain pen in one hand, staring down disappointedly at a new blank page. He had a bottle of whiskey in the other.

"I doubt Shakespeare had that many rewrites till perfection," Martha sighed. "Now, hand back my whiskey. Rental's over and I doubt Beckett wants a drunk Richard Castle arriving to her door for a first date."

Through the pain of Kate's attempted murder, then cardiac arrest, everything had changed. Castle still had a dull fire burning for her, but even the smallest of fires grow over time to be all-consuming.

Castle looked up from the page and his deep eyes caught his mother's. "I have to talk to her over dinner. Business. It's not a date."

"Fine," Martha said, snatching the whiskey. "Whatever you kids call it these days."

"Dad?" Alexis came flying into his office, her red hair spraying across her face when she came to an abrupt stop at his desk. He would normally smile at her always sudden presence, but he didn't. His knowing daughter tried not to notice. "Look at the time. And you're not even dressed for your date? Come on. Let me help you pick something out. A suit of sorts, right?"

"Whoa, Pumpkin," he looked at both of the women giving him an incredulous look, and continued to address Alexis. "This is a business dinner, no date. I sense conspiracy between you two."

Alexis smirked a bit. "You've been writing that love letter for hours. Just…tell her how you feel and let me help you pick out something."

"Not a love letter," the author murmured, diving back to it. And like that, the light of fervor was out.

"Then you should let me help you get ready for your date in an _hour_," Alexis pointed out.

"Not a date," the author pressed again.

"You're worse than Kate," Martha sighed. "But at least she's dressing up."

The author's fountain pen fell from his hand with a _smack_ on the desk.

"I knew you two weren't seeing an opera," he sighed. Even his humor lacked his usual gusto. Castle had the words, but not the expression to match it. His lips only formed the ghost of a smile though, a shell of what it used to be. "You guys went with her then to pick something out?" He looked up at the redheads. "So, what's she wearing? Alluring dress? Oh, strapless black dress? Enlighten me."

The ghost of his smile faded, replaced by its former self.

"Hmm, you seem pretty curious for a non-date." Alexis grinned lightly, "I sense a conspiracy too, dad."

[][][]

"So you're kicking out your old man for an evening of better company? Don't worry, I get it."

Jim Beckett was chuckling with a cup of coffee in his hand. He was about to change the channel on the T.V. in her apartment, but then he stopped. He watched his daughter in the corner of his eyes and found her nervously pulling on a loose strand of hair. Her darkened eyes were so far away.

Her hair was short now, like it was three years before. _"More manageable,"_ she told her father, but he felt a thick knot form in the back of his throat when he picked her up from her haircut to see a salon worker sweeping up her long, fallen hair. She walked out with her short, darker hair devoid of any loss.

Jim found himself telling Castle about his daughter's shorter hair in one of their phone calls. Since Castle was removed from Kate's life, Jim was the well-being check, because along with Lanie, he took turns looking after Beckett since she was released after her cardiac arrest. Jim remembered the author heaving a sigh at the news and replying with something completely unrelated: _"I miss her." _Jim did not know what to say, so he was silent.

Now, as it often did, silence filled Kate's apartment as her father watched her.

"You don't have to worry, you know. He's probably just as nervous as you for a first date." Jim smiled before he watched her face fall. "Sorry Katie, I just thought…"

"It's not a date," she said. "Said he had something to tell me. Business."

Jim sighed. Castle must be revealing the contents of that blackened case.

"Katie, Katie, Katie. Whatever to do with you?" Jim feigned ease, and motioned for her to sit next to him on the sofa in her living room. After a moment, she sat next to him. "Do you know how hard it must have been for him to ask you on this, uh…non-date?"

Kate closed her eyes and sighed. "He was just fine, I'm sure."

"No he wasn't," her father said. He paused for a moment and took her hand, trying to ignore it was so… _thin_. Kate noticed her father's eyes looked a bit darkened with burden. "The last time you saw him a month ago when you were released after…after your cardiac arrest, I happened to see him walk to your hospital room to see you checkout."

"And?"

"And remember how your mother liked Stephen King novels but the movies scared the crap out of her? Well, he looked like your mother when she watched _'It.' _The clown T.V. film, remember?"

Kate could not help it. At the memory she formed a light smile. Then she chuckled when her father mimicked Joanna's face of melodramatic horror with a saddened bliss glimmering in his eyes.

"Those films scared the shit out of me too, to be honest," her father confessed, shaking his head at the memory. "But that's life Katie, and there's a lot of stuff to be afraid of. But never be afraid to love."

Kate Beckett dropped his hand from hers. She got up off the sofa.

"Come on Katie, listen to the old man," he took another long sip of coffee, settling deeper into her couch with exasperation. "I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. We both know that. I don't need to tell you because you were the only one to pull me through those dark times. You don't give up on people. And I am sure as hell not giving up on you."

Her back was to him when he turned on the sofa to look at her. "Dad, you don't understand. I haven't seen him in almost a month. As far as I'm concerned, he's out of my life."

"I do understand," he said. "You're afraid for his family, you're afraid to lose him as much as he's afraid to lose you. And you know what? That's tough, but that's love."

"Dad, no. It's not that simple. I—"

"Hell," he said. "What if it is?"

"You don't know—"

"That's right," Jim said, getting his things to leave. He stopped to face his daughter, bringing a hand to pull back a loose strand of hair from her face. "You never know. And life is never certain. But I…I loved your mother so much. I would never think that I regret meeting her, or her being in my life. She's not here now, but Kate you need to see this. You need to love people while they are here, while you _can_ love them."

The detective said nothing but accepted her father's embrace.

"Now," Jim said, coughing back the knot that formed in the back of his throat. "You get on that black dress you nondescriptly hung on your bathroom door in a big white bag. And make sure you dazzle that man with the Beckett class. Call me if he needs straightening out."

Now out in the hallway, he saw his daughter crack light smile before she closed the door.

When in the elevator Jim called Martha. "Rick's scared as hell, too?"

The woman laughed on the other end of the phone, "Affirmative, Sherlock."

"I would call you Watson, partner," Jim laughed, his mood lifted by her, "But I guess we need more badass names for pulling off something like this and getting these kids out tonight."

[][][]

"You look like a lumberjack, or a fugitive, or a…lumberjack fugitive," Martha said, entering his room, poking at her son's darkened facial hair. "She hasn't seen you for almost a month with all of the well-being, getting better stuff, and she's going to think you let yourself go…or didn't go anywhere out of the house for that matter."

"No time to get rid of the scruff," he said, hastily readjusting his tie. "I'm almost late."

"As usual…so get rid of the scruff," Martha pleaded.

Alexis shot her head in the door of the bedroom. "Unless Beckett's hot for the bearded look…"

Alexis was gone before her father could even form a response.

[][][]

Castle arrived at her apartment door ten minutes later.

Against his better judgment he decided to bring along some roses he bought her. There was absolutely no logic in finding the ones he buried with that almost-immaculate letter to her in the park. They have both worn with the time.

Castle was about to ring the bell, but he stopped himself halfway, and began to nervously pace outside of her doorway, talking through what he might say after not seeing her all of this time. He battled with thinking how he would break the contents of that black suitcase to her. Secrets he how had to hide within him and from her.

This was why the author arranged the date. Castle needed to see her again, but he could not see her and be living a lie. He had to tell her about the blackened case and its secrets.

Castle was going through possible greetings out loud…until he saw two dark eyes peering at him from a sliver-opening of her apartment door.

"Beckett?"

She walked out and into the hallway, eyes still on his.

His roses for her fell in a heap at his feet.

_Goddamn, she did cut her hair… _But for reasons that he tried to ignore, it fit with the sharp features of her face that became more darkly pronounced.

She was wildly, mysteriously beautiful, standing there in that black dress with darkened designs that flowed past her knees for a little bit, and had a V shape in the front. The dress alluringly accented her body. She looked stunning, breathtaking, but this darkness was a new type of beauty for the author to take in.

His deepened blue eyes drowned in hers.

"You look so…" _Gorgeous, stunning, lovely, sexy, dark, yet so different_, "…beautiful…"

Kate Beckett did not reply, but a slow smile came to her face. Castle stooped to pick up her roses that collapsed at his feet. She took them in her hands and tried not to notice his hands were trembling as they brushed against hers.

"Thank you."

_For the breathless compliment, for the roses, for the feeling of you… _But her face betrayed nothing. Her mind was quick to silence the heart.

"You kept the beard," she observed, eyes now tracing him.

"Oh…yeah," he said, shyly caught still taking her in.

"Mmm," she replied, and with a quirk of the eyebrow, he could have sworn she broke into that almost electrifying smile as she turned for inside.

When the author did not follow at first, she came back out. "You coming in? I am putting these roses in a vase."

"Uh, yeah." Yet again, the author was caught in his observation.

"Get in. You have all night to check me out, Castle."

With that comment he ran into the door she opened for him. Thank goodness she did not hear the thud of his head, or at least acknowledge it, and was walking to her kitchen to fetch a vase, and arrange the roses in it.

Kate's favorite flowers were roses, Castle learned, from her father.

He took a moment to let his eyes achingly remember the last time he was at her apartment. It was the night that Roy Montgomery was killed and he held her trembling body against his on her couch. Her body was whole then, not weak, muscular. He buried his own sobs in her once long hair.

"So," she said, still arranging the flowers. "What's the plan?"

Castle pulled himself from his memory and said, "A secret, detective. Must we always know what we are doing?"

She poked her head from the side of the vase. "With you, I need to know, yes."

He walked to join her in the kitchen. "All you need to know is it's a secret, and we will probably be taking a taxi."

Now it was her chance to turn the tables, he could tell. As he approached her, she had that slight grin.

"Well, there are so many better ways to get around New York besides a taxi."

He raised an eyebrow. She grinned and watched his face transform in her own mischievous happiness.

"I've been cleared by the doctor, Castle. Time to revisit an old friend…"

[][][]

"Now, you give me directions as we ride, got it? And give them well in advanced. I am not up for major maneuvering with this thing. Also, I don't plan to be a concrete ornament and or human piñata tonight."

To Richard Castle, it was like the gods took him into one of his most secret fantasies at a time his heart was most vulnerable as some cruel sort of payback. She was at the driver's helm of her 94' Harley Softail motorcycle and he was awkwardly shifting in the seat behind her, his legs around her, his chest pressed into her back.

Kate wanted to turn around to face him, but deciding with their proximity that would be disastrous, she kept her face forward.

"Stop fidgeting and put that helmet on."

The author picked up the thing with a strange curiosity. "But _you_ don't have to wear one."

"That's mine," she said. "But you'll need it. I don't have the tendency to fall off things, wave to random strangers, or get easily distracted. That's a no-no here, as in sudden death or at least major street-burn. Are we clear?"

"Unequivocally." The author grinned.

She finally got fed up with his antics and put the helmet on his head.

"Wouldn't want that scruff to be damaged," she chuckled.

"Aw, you like the scruff."

Kate rolled her eyes and revved the engine which made the author jump.

"In your dreams, buddy boy."

"Oh," he smiled devilishly. "I think I am in one."

When the bike lurched forward and into the street, the author yelped and grabbed her around the waist, his hands holding on desperately, fearfully, as he clung to her body.

"Put your hands on my _shoulders_!" she shouted back to him.

"Sorry," he said, perfectly hearing her words. "With this big helmet here I can't hear you."

[][][]

As they drove and he shouted directions, Kate was quick to notice he perfectly heard her replies. So much for honesty. But, she did not tell him to let go of her body. In a saddening way, Kate felt she could not. Not after he held her trembling body against the car to keep her away from Montgomery's murder. Not after he held her in his arms that night on her sofa. Not after he held her body to his in the hospital.

His body was shelter. His body was home. And with a distressing pang in her heart, Kate forced this new-found revelation out.

But she let him hold her on the motorcycle. She let his helmet-bearing face come to rest a bit beside hers.

"I've missed this feeling," she finally sighed, turning her head to face his at a stop light for that nerve-racking split-second she hoped Castle didn't hear her aloud thoughts.

Kate could not tell if it was the city lights reflecting against his helmet, but his eyes seemed to be glistening under the eye-visor. When the author wrapped his arms a bit tighter against her waist, more intimately, she felt her heart churn.

"Kate, I've missed it, too. I've missed _you_."

Then there was a silence; the drone and bustle of city night life.

"I meant…riding a motorcycle." She offered lamely, her hand flew through her short hair exasperatedly.

"Sure," the author deadpanned.

The light turned green and Kate did not seem to notice until the author gave a playful tap to her hip.

"Giddy up, daydreamer."

[][][]

Kate stopped the motorcycle with a screeching halt. Castle closed his eyes and held onto her tighter bracing for an impact of some sorts. When nothing came and they were safely stopped, he let her go…just a little bit.

"Castle, a dark alleyway? Seriously, where the hell are we going?"

"Shh," the author said, putting a silencing index finger to his helmet. "Otherwise I will have to blindfold you and ride you there on this thing myself."

"Well then," Kate said, arms extended, "Let me cross off the _Harley Softail_ insignia on this bike and write '_R.M.S. Titanic_' on it instead."

"Hey, if you're Kate Winslet's character, you survive."

"My point exactly." She knocked on his helmet. "Just looking out for the scruff."

"Why detective…"

But she threw down the heavy-plastic eye visor of the helmet to shut him out. He lifted it again to speak.

"So, go down to the end of the block here, and take a right and you'll see it."

"See what?"

He began to massage her shoulders. "Patience, detective."

"Hands, Castle."

"Fine…"

Kate let the motorcycle jump back to life and it sped down the alleyway. She turned right and kept going until they came to a property at the end of the street obscured by trees, illuminated in the night by pale lamplight. She stopped the bike and stared out to see objects becoming clearer from the shadows. The place had a stillness to it almost like a physical presence.

"Castle," she turned to face to him. "This is a children's park."

Kate expected an answer from him, but he was mysteriously silent, almost nervous-looking as he got off the bike and took his helmet off. His eyes were fixed on distant swings that creaked in the warm night breeze as if ghosts were reliving their lost childhood. The last glimmers of sunset in the distance were a violent scarlet. His eyes, which always secretly embodied the sea to her, looked fiery and dark.

"Yes, this is a park." His voice was soft, almost inaudible as it drifted with the heated breeze. "Do you remember anything about it?"

The detective turned off the bike and let it rest under a tree near where the street met the sidewalk.

"I do," she said and her heart pounded heavily against her ribcage. This was the park she went to with Castle for a case about three years ago, but so much had changed. The buildings behind and on the sides of the park were knocked down. This park became filled with overgrown trees, some of which were probably behind the old buildings.

But none of the physicality of the park mattered to Kate. Not in this moment.

This was where Castle talked to her about his failed two marriages, about taking his daughter to parks. She could almost see ghosts of them both peering over the black cast-iron gates which were now gone.

This is where she told him she was a 'one and done' type.

She now felt the urge to run, or to soar away like the raven that cawed and flew above her head from a gnarled tree branch. Her chest tightened with all of the possibilities as to why he asked her there.

He must have noticed her apprehension because he came from the light of the streetlamp and met her in the shadows. He moved to her and before he was enveloped in the darkness with her, his eyes looked saddened in the lamplight. She felt his hands fall on her shoulders.

"_Trust me_," he breathed.

The author's breath was so close humming under her ear that her body tensed at the sensation. She murmured, and nodded her head only to feel his face brush against hers. Their heated breaths mingled from each other's mouths when the contact of their faces was broken.

She accepted this unknown.

His heart pounded violently as he reached for her hand in the darkness.

But then he realized something. Her hand was already trying to find his…

[][][]

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** _And the scene fades out… What does the audience have to say about this chapter? I hope it encompassed love in a meaningful, yet different way. Thoughts?_


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